Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef

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Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef, German actress and singer (born Dec. 28, 1925, Ulm, Ger.—died Feb. 1, 2002, Berlin, Ger.), had a versatile stage and screen career that took her back and forth between post-World War II Europe and the U.S., where she triumphed as the Soviet commissar Ninotchka in Cole Porter’s Broadway musical Silk Stockings (1955). Knef starred as a former concentration camp prisoner in Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946; Murderers Among Us), scandalized Germany with a brief nude scene in Die Sünderin (1950; The Sinner), and played Pirate Jenny in Die Dreigroschenoper (1963; The Threepenny Opera). Her Hollywood films, in most of which she was billed as Hildegard Neff to downplay her German origins, included Decision Before Dawn (1951) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). In the 1960s she developed a cabaret act, often writing her own lyrics. She published two volumes of memoirs, Der geschenkte Gaul (1970; The Gift Horse), in which she described her harrowing wartime experiences, and Das Urteil (1976; The Verdict).